Beat the industry at its own game. Thought rising tuition costs were bad? Try textbooks. College students spend an average of $563 per semester on books, which is actually 20% less than they did during the 2007-08 school year. But consider this: The price of textbooks has increased 812% since 1978, and is steadily increasing by 6% every year. So how are students spending less on their books? Unlike the rest of the economy, which is driven by supply and demand, the textbook industry willalways have demand, so it can increase prices every year, and students will still pay them. "The economics of college textbooks is very different from anything else," Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, tells Bloomberg. "Professors select the books and students have to pay for them, so the normal market mechanisms aren't at play here. Publishing companies charge whatever they can get away with, which is unsustainable." In fact, according to the American Enterprise Institute, college textbook prices have experienced a steeper hike than the housing bubble and the rising costs of medical services over the last 40 years. But Perry predicts that the "college textbook bubble" will pop (much like the housing bubble), thanks to free educational resources online. Most professors will require students to purchase the most updated editions of textbooks, even though the changes made are usually insignificant. But think about it: No one's forcing you to buy textbooks at your college bookstore. There are other ways to acquire books, and 82% of students are looking elsewhere for their books. Thrifty students find ways to cut corners, like splitting the cost of textbooks and sharing them, subscribing to open education resource (or OER) services like Boundless, and renting books from Chegg, Amazon Textbooks, or their college bookstore. Especially if you'll only use books for a semester, renting is a great alternative to buying. On the other hand, most colleges also have a Textbook Exchange group on Facebook, where students buy and sell used textbooks in a makeshift marketplace. There, supply-and-demand principles are in place, so if you buy a book for less than it's worth, you may be able to make a profit. (If everyone wants the same psychology textbook, and one becomes available, the seller can charge as much as they want.) There's also OpenStax, which allows academics to release their work for free and is used at over 2,000 colleges nationwide. Forbes thinks this has the potential to disrupt the $10 billion educational publishing industry. But until resources like these become the standard for higher education, most students study at the mercy of textbook conglomerates, so they'll just have to keep playing the market. Source
